Having women on bank top teams leads to riskier decisions – study

That's the counter-intuitive finding – one of several interesting insights – that arises from a study of the performance of banks during the financial crisis. The Bundesbank may have lost some of its allure once the European Central Bank took over making the country's monetary policy. But Germany's own central bank is still an intellectual powerhouse. It commissioned and published a study of supervisory boards of banks that reaches rather intriguing conclusion. The authors – academics based in the US, Germany and the UK – looked at how the age, gender and education of executive teams affect risk-taking. Younger executive teams increase risk taking. So do board changes that result in a higher proportion of female executives. "In contrast, if board changes increase the representation of executives holding Ph.D. degrees, risk taking declines," they conclude. Given that banking it, by definition, a risk-taking business, perhaps the study should be interpreted as saying that academics – rather than women – should steer clear of banking.

Source document: The Bundesbank report "Executive board composition and bank risk taking," by Allen Berger of the University of South Carolina, Thomas Kick of the Bundesbank and Klaus Schaeck of Bangor University, is an 80-page pdf file, in English.